fyi - Smardt chiller - HEAT RECLAIM

[Turboheatreclai]

My company has just installed a new heat reclaim Smardt Chiller(turbocor compressors). It is a multi compressor unit 6 x 90 ton turbocors. When it was first installed we had problems because as the load increased the compressors that were on had to back off to decrease the PR(pressure ratio)to bring on an extra compressor.As this compressor tried to start there were pressure fluctuatios across the other compressors causing this compressor to go into alarm after max starts attempted. Because the other compressors had to back off during this time the chilled water would rise through the roof. The next attempt was to add hot gas valves to equalize the pressure ,this was attempted. Still problems. It was discovered that the condensing water temp had to be decreased from 40c to 35c to reduce the PR to allow the other compressors to start without going into alarm. Not the results we were expecting. Still working on solution for more heat.:off topic:

[ptsac]

I thought that Smardt would pretty much know all the boundaries of these compressors. Jackson Ball sometimes posts on this forum it would be good to hear his take on this. I worked on some semi integrated compressors a while ago (air cooled) and found that condensing pressure had to be low to prevent surging before compressor had ramped to above 20000 rpm approx. Later models used a discharge bypass to overcome this problem successfully. Does the next compressor fail on a bearing error or does the heat reclaim controller lock this out. It would be good if you can keep us posted on progress.

[Turboheatreclai]

The compressor was showing BMC faults each time it tried to start, Until the maximum amount of starts were attempted. We also experienced a problem with the killtec control panel, the panel would lock up and after rebooting the windows base program would not restart,therefore we were looking at a blank screen and no chiller! This was corrected but there was down time. I hope by the end of this year we will have the bugs worked out. The power consumption of these units is a fraction of what we had before. power savings are very noticeable. Note : I have five Smardt chillers on site 3 heat reclaim and 2 chilled water for a total of 2340 ton and I will try to keep this thread aware of the problems and the acomplishments of this new technology.